Month: July 2014

Well actually, it’s not as simple as it sounds. If you start with a blank sheet of paper and try to just write out your plan, you’ll likely find yourself short on inspiration and walk away with no plan and boatload of frustration.

When it comes to meal planning, it’s the same thing. You often need to be ushered through the planning process if you hope to come out the other side with a solid plan that you can stick to. Let me help!

I recently came across this great post from the kitchn that reminded me of one my favorite tricks to healthy snacking – always have snack foods prepped and on hand! And how are you to have the ingredients for those tasty snacks unless you add them to your weekly plan and shopping list?

I just love this salad! So much that I had it a few days ago and found myself craving it today so I had it again for dinner tonight.

I call it the “one ingredient salad” and I discovered it quite by mistake.

A few weeks back, I got golden beets in my weekly CSA share. Usually, when I pickup the weekly box of fruits and veggies, I immediately cut, wash and wrap the greens. And in the case of beets, I remove the greens immediately just so they’ll fit in the fridge. That week, I didn’t intend to actually eat the golden beet greens but figured I could wash and save them to be juiced later in the week. (more…)

I’ve just added a new Printables section to the blog. To start, you’ll find two simple resources to help with your family’s food planning:

Weekly menu plan that you can hang on the fridge so your whole family knows what’s for dinner

Shopping list template that that’s organized by grocery department to save you time in the store

These are just a start! As you might imagine, these basic sheets will be some of the building blocks for the final meal planner. Over the coming weeks, I’ll explain more about how and why you should use them, collect feedback from you, and show how I use them myself. So stay tuned for tweaks and improvements.

In these early weeks of summer, I find that the local produce is sometimes hard to handle – lots of rich deep greens, and only a tease of all the wonderful fruit yet to come. It leaves me itching for the veggies of late July – tomatoes, onions, peppers, carrots and corn! Please hurry up!

I do my best to cook what’s in season, which sometimes means a bit of improvisation. Strawberries in your salad? Sure. Cherries in your salsa? Why yes.

Here are a few posts from the (way-back) archives that use fruit in untraditional ways.

Sometimes it takes a little creativity, but it’s pretty satisfying to use up every last piece of your fresh ingredients rather than toss them in the trash. Not only does it save you money but also helps you put off a trip to the grocery store by another day or two!

Some other “creative” ingredients that I repurposed this week:
- Soft strawberries: blended them into smoothies
- Stale bread: roasted to make croutons
- Beet greens: diced them up to make the based of a salad
- Wilted arugula: Sautéed it in olive oil and created a warm side dish for pasta